Espresso3D has been released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Please see the left side of the page for links to the E3D's source code and begin contributing to the project! This decision was made mostly because I no longer have the time to push E3D ahead myself. I'm hoping E3D can begin active development again with some help, but if not at the very least this decision will get the source out there for other developers to reference. I hope it will be of some benefit.

The features page is currently being updated to a new data-driven format that will help that page stay up-to-date with the current features in E3D. You can check out a preview of it here. It should be linked from the sidebar later today, replacing the current features page, once all the kinks are worked out.

In other news, skeletal animation is still holding the next release up. Forward animation isn't causing any problems. What is causing problems is when an animation ends resetting the positions of bones and vertices isn't working as designed yet. There seems to be some sort of floating point problem causing things to degrade over time. Again, once this is resolved, v0.5 will be released.

Due to a recent vehicle accident (rollover) [a few pics here] things slowed down on progress slightly during recovery. Luckily, the truck held up fairly well for rolling 3 times and no one was injured too seriously. But, at any rate, I'm pleased to report things should be ramping up again. I know this release is taking a long time, but it seems that there is always something coming up slowing it down (such as the pictures above). Hopefully things will go smoothly again.

Top priority is finishing off the Milkshape3D export plugin and skeletal animation within E3D. Should have some screenshots of that soon.

Documentation (javadoc and actor/map specification) for version 0.42 has finally been posted! Check the documentation link for more information. I apologize for the delay. Delays between release and documentation posting like this will NOT happen again with future releases.

V0.5 is still in early stages. Lots of work has been spent trying to find performance optimizations in existing code, but so far, there hasn't been too much of an increase. Shader support is getting closer as is skeletal animation. What's holding skeletal animation back is finding a consistent format between modelling packages to use in E3D (as far as keyframes/commands go). I'm looking at creating an exporter for Milkshape3D->E3D formats, but I haven't made a final decision yet as to which format to go with and what sort of skeletal animation format to use.

Version 0.42 has finally been officially released on the downloads page. This should resolve most issues with point sprites on ATI vs. nVidia cards. They are now act very similarly. Also, there is now an option to forcefully disable point sprites even if hardware supports it in the engine's geometry renderer. This can be called anytime after initialization to stop point sprite rendering. This is typically not necessary, but there are some cases where point sprites may not be desired due to rendering differences on some cards (and odd viewport clipping behavior in multiple viewport configurations).

Hopefully v0.4 is now completed. 0.4 documentation is next on the list to be updated with the latest map specs and such. Then, work on v0.5 can begin. Currently plans are in the works for skeletal animation, per-pixel lighting and shadowing, shader support, and a much needed interface cleanup As always, more features may make it into the mix as v0.5 is still in very early stages.

Lastly, the site is having some changes creep in. Nothing too different on the user side, but it will greatly ease site management so updates will go smoother.

Remember, if you find any bugs with Espresso3D or the site, please report them!

I'm releasing a pre-release version of 0.42 to help people that are experiencing an Invalid Operation crash at the startup of the engine. This is not an official release yet, just an update to 0.41 to fix some problems found on certain video cards.

This won't be in the files section because it isn't complete (ie: doesn't resolve 1 open issue that's left with point sprites on MX440's being extremely small), but it does solve a crash problem on GeForce4 MX440's and other video cards that support less than 3 texture units for multitexturing.

The file is available at http://www.espresso3d.com/files/PRE0_42/espresso3d-jar-v0_42.zip All functionality should be identical to 0.41, it just fixes the MX440 crash bug. I will release the official 0.42 as soon as I resolve the point sprite size problem on MX440's, which should be soon.

Version 0.41 has been released to address a few bugs that have come up in v0.4.

Updates include logging enhancements to help track down the Geforce 4 MX440 problem some people are experiencing. Hopefully, though, this release will fix that problem. Also, portal support was inadvertantly left disabled in v0.4 and has been re-enabled. Portals should behave normally again.

E3D version 0.4 has been released and is available for download along with new documentation, 4 new tutorials, and a new file converter!

Version 0.4 adds (to name a few):

Download the latest version now!

Because this release has so many changes, I expect some bugs to appear. Please post any problems in the form or email me to report problems. I will release service releases if necessary.

Its been almost 2 months since the release of v0.3, so a progress update is in order.

V0.4 is going well, albeit slowly. This is due mainly to the refactoring of some core functionality of the engine to help make translations/rotations/etc. much faster. Work has been going well on this, but is taking much longer than expected due to the impacts the change has had on other core engine features such as collision detection and rendering. The change will be worth it in the long run and was very necessary.

Everything in this core change is now being finalized and tested and new-feature progress will continue soon. The v0.4 features aren't very far off either, as most of them were completed or greater than 60 percent completed before the core refactoring was started. So, v0.4 is coming, its not too terribly far off, and it will have some great new features!

E3D version 0.3 has been released and is available for download along with new documentation, an updated Pong clone game, and an OBJtoE3D file converter!

Version 0.3 adds:

Download the latest version now!

Because this release has so many changes, I expect some bugs to appear. Please post any problems in the form or email me to report problems. I will release service releases if necessary.

V0.3 is getting much closer now. This version is taking much longer then expected due to some unexpected, nasty bugs. A more detailed explanation of the status of the upcoming release and the problems that have plagued it is available in the forum.

A new screenshot was posted in the screenshots section showing text and 2D image support that will be present in v0.3.

V0.3 is progressing well, though a little slower then previous versions. Lots of things are changing and being made easier in v0.3! It should be a good release when completed.

A potential featureset for v0.3 of E3D has been posted in the forums. If there are any features you would like to see in the upcoming releases, be sure to discuss that there! Remember, this is the potential featureset of 0.3, it could grow or shrink come release time.

E3D version 0.2 has been released and is available for download along with new documentation and an updated Pong clone game.

Version 0.2 adds orthographic viewports, a portal rendering algorithm, particle system support, improved mapfile support, completely reworked collision detection to be completely flexible for checking collisions on all sorts of objects (included particles in particle systems), performance enhancements, and many, many other tweaks and improvements!

Download the latest version now!

Because this release has so many changes, I expect some bugs to appear. Please post any problems in the form or email me to report problems. I will release service releases if necessary.

Another pair of screenshots have been added to the screenshots section showing a new splash screen that will be in v0.2. It demonstrates the particle effects and per-vertexx dynamic lighting in v0.2. The original splash screen is still there as well. The splash is chosen randomly by the engine.

Just one more thing to fix with portals and v0.2 will be ready to go!

Two new screenshots have been posted in the screenshots section.

V0.2 keeps creeping closer...

The collision detection refactoring has been completed so now any object implementing E3DCollisionDetectableObject is supported by the collision detector.

The last real bug I'm wrestling with is in map loading where setting the up vector for actors (and now particle systems) doesn't rotate the object correctly. This shouldn't take too much longer to resolve.

I still haven't had a chance to implement bounding boxes, so they may not make it into this release. If they don't, they will take top priority on v0.3.

The last step before release will be to update the pong clone game to show some of the new features (orthographic viewports, particle systems, possibly a portal though I don't see how it is very useful in a game like pong).

I may (if time allows) add a few demos as well to show things like collision detectable particle systems that won't make it into the pong clone.

For those that are wondering, the hold up on v0.2 is that I'm refactoring collision detection. I initially made the assumption that the only types of objects in the engine that would support collision detection would be world geometry (triangles) and actors. I've realized that isn't good enough so I'm refactoring it to be much more generic. This will allow it to support collisions with geometry, actors, particles, sprites, lights, etc. Basically anything in the engine that implements the E3DCollisionDetectableObject class. This will make the collision detector much more robust and useful.

Don't fret though. It is getting closer every day!

V0.2 is still in progress, but it looks like its going to take a little more than the week I had hoped. However, it is still coming soon and getting close!

A new screenshot has been added to the screenshots section. This shows particle systems, one of the many upcoming features in v0.2.

V0.2 progress is going well and should be available within a week or so. It will include performance tweaks, portal support, particle system support, orthographic viewports, and more! Be sure to stop by the forum and request the features you would like to see in the coming releases!

Espresso3D v0.1 is now available on the downloads page. Also available is the free, open source Pong clone game built on Espresso3D.

Full API specifications, file specifications, and setup/usage instructions are available in the Tutorials/Documentation section.

Welcome to Espresso3D.com! Currently, E3D is under active development and is making great progress. As of this moment, I am finishing up some collision detection bugs, and making some architecture changes in preparation of the release of version 0.1 of the engine.

E3D is still very young, having only been under active development a couple of months, but that doesn't mean the engine isn't destined for great things. Version 0.1 is going to be extremely usable for simple games and applications (i.e.: Pong) and more features will be added constantly.